REPAIRING MARRIAGE

We need to create space in our relationships for mistakes, for periods of drought, even for anger.
We need to have patience with each other.
We want to be appreciated for our good qualities (even if they're not always in evidence) and loved despite our failings, but why should we assume it is any easier for our spouse to do this than for us to do it? We praise those who are tolerant and kind and patient, those who can see beneath the surface to the good in others, those who can offer unconditional love, and we hunger for those qualities to manifest themselves in the person we marry. But why do we put so much effort into demanding that our spouses exhibit these traits and so little into cultivating them in ourselves? As so many have said, we need to concentrate on changing ourselves instead of on changing our mates.
I don't claim to sport any personal halo in this regard. I've been married for twenty-six years, and my husband and I have done our share of blaming. He doesn't meet all my needs, and I don't meet all of his either. Sometimes he's met so few of them that I have been tempted to throw in the towel. Sometimes he's contemplated leaving me. We've lived through serious problems and have treated each other badly while we struggled with them.
No, I'm pretty bad at loving, but I'd like to be better. I think I'd be a lot happier. The few times I've been able to get past my infantile fury at not getting my way and tried to explore why I might need to change, I have been gratified by the results. When I do assume that this world is a place for learning how to be a better, more mature, more loving person, and when I am willing to look at my husband as a teaching aid rather than as a repair project, we end up on the same side of the problem of personal growth. We function as coaches for each other. When we insist on seeing the other as the enemy, however, we end up in a perpetual zero sum game.
I think that fundamentally marriage exists to teach us how to love. When we treat our partners as precious gifts and see them as valuable in their own right (not simply as useful appendages to ourselves), we learn to get outside of ourselves and to really see the wonder of another human being. When we look at conflict as an opportunity to grow, we find an alternative to frustration and despair. When we use our marriages as places where we can learn about loving, when we are not afraid to see ourselves in all our glory and all our imperfection, then, I think, we can learn to finally grow up.